Cybersecurity for Blockchains

Confidentiality in decentralized applications

Blockchains are important and disruptive. They establish trust between parties and transaction authenticity, without having a central authority. But smart contract transactions are not confidential. Everyone can access and see all information that is sent to and stored in a smart contract. Hyker end-to-end full data lifecycle encryption is a suitable solution when you need to protect the confidentiality of sensitive information stored on the blockchain.

Hyker confidentiality for Blockchains

Blockchains enables the development of decentralized applications or Dapps. This new category of applications uses second-generation blockchains like Ethereum for data distribution, consensus, and coordination, without central points. Anything that is broadcast onto the network, including all transactions, is public to all nodes. This transparency limits many use cases for the technology.

For instance, there are transparency risks for companies using the blockchain for their financial transactions. By fully exposing their transactions in a public ledger they are literally publishing their accounting records. They might reveal confidential information about their business, sales, and customers.

Even building a private blockchain doesn’t adequately address this issue because trust could easily be broken by a bad actor, such as a hacker or insider.

Another example could be a decentralized carpool/car rental service. The service uses a blockchain for keeping track of the current state of affairs. Where are the vehicles located, what vehicles are currently available, what is the current rental price, car insurance policy, claims, etc. This is fully possible and currently being developed at e.g. MiCars. Also, major enterprises are exploring car sharing through Dapps, like EY, with their Tesseract platform, and Toyota. Some of this data is private and confidential, like for example: “who is in a certain vehicle?” This data needs to be available at request, but should not be public. Hyker technology can solve this by securing the data before it enters the blockchain.

Traditional methods of data security are not applicable in Dapps since they are tailored for centralized scenarios. Hyker technology, however, is decentralized at its core and therefore fully maps against the Dapp scenarios.

A blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial deals, but virtually everything of value. The blockchain database isn’t stored in any single location, meaning the records it keeps are truly public and easily verifiable. No centralized version of this information exists for a single provider or hacker to corrupt. Hosted by millions of computers simultaneously, its data is accessible to anyone on the internet.

It is an ingenious invention – the brainchild of a person or group of people known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

By allowing digital information to be distributed but not copied, blockchain technology created the backbone of a new type of internet. Originally devised for the digital currency Bitcoin, the tech community is now finding other potential uses for the technology.

Bitcoin has been called digital gold and for a good reason. And blockchains can make other types of digital value. Like the internet (or your car), you don’t need to know how the blockchain works to use it.